Newsnews2015-08-01T12:57:01Zhttp://www.gopusa.com/news/feed/atom/WordPressPittsburgh Post-Gazettehttp://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=426572015-08-01T12:57:01Z2015-08-01T11:50:06ZIs the Obama administration trying to use Social Security to prevent more than 4 million Americans from being able to buy guns?

The National Rifle Association thinks so and is asking for donations to help fight what it calls the largest gun grab in American history -- from people who lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs.

The Social Security Administration confirmed that it is developing a new policy. It does not currently require the reporting of its mentally incapacitated beneficiaries to the government's gun-purchase background check system.

The NRA says if Social Security starts doing so it would allow the government to disarm the 4.2 million Social Security pensioners who have a "representative payee" to manage their benefits, forcing some elderly or disabled people to decide between arming themselves or getting their Social Security checks.

Federal gun laws prohibit the possession or sale of firearms to those who "have been adjudicated as a mental defective or been committed to a mental institution."

According to a July 18 article in the Los Angeles Times, critics of the Social Security policy say it would affect "numerous people who may just have a bad memory or difficulty balancing a checkbook."

The NRA learned of the policy from the Times article, according to its press office. The organization sent an email to its members last week requesting money to "stop Obama from confiscating millions of guns."

"The NRA's claim that millions of people will lose their gun rights is fear-mongering and hyperbole," said Shira Goodman, executive director of the gun-control advocacy group CeaseFirePA. "In terms of getting better records into the background check system, it's very important. Our system is only as good as the records that are in there."

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System is used by federally licensed gun dealers to assure its customers are not legally prohibited from owning a gun. The electronic database contains more than 13 million records, including the names of fugitives, drug addicts, illegal immigrants, felons and dishonorably discharged service members.

From 1998 to June 2015, background checks prevented more than 1.2 million people from buying guns, according to FBI statistics. About 18,600 people were denied because they were adjudicated mentally defective.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is required to retrieve firearms from people who purchased them before being reported to the background check system.

Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012, President Barack Obama has worked to expand the background check system to keep guns away from those who are mentally unfit. In 2013, he issued a memorandum calling for federal agencies to submit more records to the system.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reports the names of "mentally incompetent" beneficiaries -- who are unable to manage their own funds and receive their payments through fiduciaries -- to the background check system, according to the department's public affairs office. The department gives affected individuals advance notice and an opportunity to appeal the decision.

The Social Security Administration press office would not detail the policy change, saying it is still in development. It confirmed that it does not currently submit records to the background check system.

Kim Stolfer, president of Pennsylvania-based Firearms Owners Against Crime, said it would be "preposterous" if Social Security records were submitted to the system.

"To force people to choose between self-defense and feeding themselves is despicable," he said.

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(c)2015 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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]]>23Anniston Star (Anniston, Ala.)http://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=426962015-08-01T12:26:01Z2015-08-01T11:45:51ZAnniston City Councilman David Reddick was arrested Wednesday and charged with harassment, according to records of the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office.

The arrest stemmed from a dispute between Reddick and the owner of a barbershop on Bynum Leatherwood Road, Sheriff Larry Amerson said via text message Thursday. Reddick turned himself in to the Sheriff's Office on Wednesday after the business owner signed a warrant for his arrest Tuesday, Amerson wrote. The councilman posted bail and was released shortly thereafter, according to the records.

Attempts to reach Stewart on Thursday afternoon were not immediately successful.

Milton Ford, owner of Ford's Barber Shop on Bynum Leatherwood Road, earlier this month said the councilman in a July 15 visit to the shop demanded he remove a Confederate flag from the front of his business.

Ford alleged that Reddick told him his business might face repercussions for not taking the flag down.

"I'm not wanting to talk to y'all," Ford said on Thursday when reached by phone at his business.

"You've opened up a can of worms, now," he said, just before hanging up.

Reddick told a reporter earlier this month he wasn't threatening Ford in that exchange, but was trying to explain his view that a proposed ordinance regarding public nuisances could allow the city to force Ford to remove the flag.

The Anniston City Council during its meeting Monday night postponed a vote on that ordinance until Aug. 10.

If adopted, the ordinance would allow the council to declare as a nuisance properties on which criminal activity repeatedly occurs. Reddick has opposed the ordinance's passage.

Under Alabama law, harassment is a Class C misdemeanor. A conviction for that crime could result in not more than three months' jail time, a $500 fine, or both.

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(c)2015 The Anniston Star (Anniston, Ala.)

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]]>15Associated Presshttp://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=427182015-08-01T12:24:35Z2015-08-01T11:35:05ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, earned more than $139 million between 2007 and 2014, according to eight years of federal income tax returns released by her campaign on Friday.

The returns show that the Clintons paid an overall federal tax rate of 31.6 percent during those years. The bulk of the Clintons' income came from speeches delivered to corporate and interest groups by Bill Clinton and later by Hillary Clinton after she resigned as secretary of state in early 2013.

In a statement released by her campaign, Hillary Clinton said the couple has paid nearly $44 million in federal taxes on $139.1 million in income since 2006, and donated nearly $15 million to charity.

"We've come a long way from my days going door-to-door for the Children's Defense Fund and earning $16,450 as a young law professor in Arkansas - and we owe it to the opportunities America provides," she said.

Clinton's statement did not comment on the specifics of her earnings. Last May, financial disclosures released by her campaign reported that the couple had earned more than $30 million from speeches and book royalties since January 2014.

The Associated Press has estimated the Clintons made nearly $50 million in earnings from speeches alone since 2000.

The Clintons donated nearly 11 percent of their income to charity in 2014, according to her tax return. This year, the Clintons boosted personal donations to their global family charity, the Clinton Foundation, to between $5 million and $10 million.

Clinton used the occasion to reinforce her call from earlier this month for tax code reforms that would tighten restrictions on corporate profits and tax benefits for wealthy Americans. The federal tax code, she said, is "full of loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans and most powerful corporations to game the system and avoid paying their fair share."

She has vowed, if elected, to revive a push in Congress to institute the so-called Buffett rule, named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, which would impose a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on anyone making more than $1 million a year.

Clinton also reaffirmed her pledge to close the "carried interest" loophole in federal taxes if elected president. Carried interest, or the share of profits from an investment fund paid to the fund manager, is taxed as the lower capital gains rate of 15 percent instead of as ordinary income, which could range between 20 and 36.9 percent.

She has also advocated for raising the tax on capital gains to as much as 28 percent for short-term investments.

The couple made nearly $23 million from speaking fees alone in 2013 - the year Clinton left the State Department - and collected an additional $20 million from paid events last year. The remainder of their income came largely from book royalties and consulting fees paid to Bill Clinton.

The returns also detailed Bill Clinton's previously undisclosed earnings from recent consulting work for corporate and private interests both in the United States and abroad.

In 2014, the former president made more than $4.2 million in earnings from Laureate International Universities, where he was honorary chancellor for schools scattered across the globe. Clinton had a five-year deal with the organization, starting in 2010, but ended his relationship last April, two weeks after his wife announced her bid for president.

Bill Clinton had not previously detailed his work for Laureate, but he appeared in 2013 at events for the operation's schools in Morocco, Brazil, Peru and Spain.

Bill Clinton was also paid $2.1 million from the Dubai-based Verkey GEMS Foundation, whose CEO, Vikas Pota, aims to provide educations to more than 100 million underprivileged children around the world through scholarships and teacher training.

Clinton's precise role with GEMS has not been disclosed, but he named the enterprise a strategic partner of his foundation's Clinton Global Initiative.

The earnings were paid to Bill Clinton through a shell company set up for his nonspeech work. The entity, WJC LLC, was set up in Delaware and New York, lapsed briefly and renewed in 2013. The existence of the LLC was disclosed by the AP earlier this year, but Bill Clinton's office would not detail how it was used by the former president.

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]]>9Associated Presshttp://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=427112015-08-01T12:56:42Z2015-07-31T16:57:06ZHELENA, Mont. (AP) -- An 18-year-old Wyoming man accused of robbing and shooting three members of a family after asking for roadside help told investigators he opened fire after one of the victims laughed at him, an FBI agent said in a court filing Thursday.

Jason Shane, 51, and Tana Shane, 47, died in the Wednesday shooting in the small town of Pryor, FBI spokesman Todd Palmer told The Associated Press. Their daughter, 26-year-old Jorah Shane, was shot in the back when she tried to run away, and she is recovering in a Billings hospital, the woman's aunt, Ada Shane, said.

The statement by Special Agent Larry McGrail II was filed in U.S. District Court seeking a murder warrant for Jesus Deniz, also known as Jesus Deniz Mendoza, of Worland, Wyoming.

FBI agents say Deniz, a Mexican national and green card holder, “admitted to shooting three people with a .22-caliber rifle and then driving away from the scene in the victims’ vehicle.”
- Fox News

Two FBI agents interviewed Deniz on Wednesday, and Deniz acknowledged shooting three people with a .22 caliber rifle and then driving away in their car, McGrail's statement said.

"Deniz told the interviewing agents that he shot the victims because he was getting tired of waiting around, and because the daughter had laughed at him," the statement said.

Deniz is being held in Park County, Wyoming, after police arrested him near Meeteetse, about 120 miles away from Pryor. A judge's signed warrant would begin the process of returning Deniz to Montana to face charges in the killing.

Jorah Shane recounted to her relatives the events leading to the shooting. Her mother, Tana Shane, drove by a young man parked on the side of the road who told her he had run out of fuel, Ada Shane said.

"He's only 18, and he looked like an innocent boy," Ada Shane said. "Both my brother and sister-in-law have big hearts."

Tana Shane went by her house, picked up her husband and daughter, and they drove back to the stranded car, Ada Shane said. The man pulled a gun and held it to the temple of 51-year-old Jason Shane.

He ordered the father to stop the car and told everybody to get out, Ada Shane said. He told the family to give him their money, but the family said they had only change because they recently returned from a religious revival in Window Rock, Arizona.

The man told the family to start walking. Tana Shane told her daughter in their Native American language to run. Jorah Shane told her aunt that she heard a shot, started running then heard bullets whizzing by her head. She fell, heard another shot, and started running again toward a church just as a car was pulling out.

She ran to the car, and the frightened driver leaped out, Ada Shane said. Jorah Shane jumped in the driver's seat and drove to her house with the shooter still firing at her, the aunt said.

McGrail's statement largely confirmed the account by Ada Shane, though it did not name the victims and it said the driver who stopped near the church got out of the car to check on the woman's parents.

Jorah Shane was later hospitalized. A bullet had grazed her head and she had a gunshot wound to the back. She didn't know as of Thursday that her parents had been killed in the shooting, Ada Shane said.

"Last night before she went in, she told everyone to go look for her mom, she's hiding in the field," Ada Shane said.

The aunt said relatives have kept the hospital room's television off and she doesn't know how they will break the news to her.

Palmer, the FBI spokesman, declined to identify Jorah Shane as the wounded person, saying the FBI does not provide information about potential witnesses.

It is not clear whether Deniz has an attorney. Park County court officials said a hearing had not been set for Deniz.

Messages left on two phone numbers listed under Deniz's name were not returned.

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]]>29Arutz Sheva (Israel)http://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=427052015-07-31T16:51:49Z2015-07-31T16:55:39ZRepresentative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was truly stumped on Thursday when asked on national TV what the difference was between her party and socialism.

In an interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews in which the openly socialist Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was brought up, she was asked, "what is the difference between a Democrat and a socialist?"

The stammering Wasserman-Schultz was pressed by Matthews, who said, "I used to think there was a big difference. What do you think?"

The DNC chair quickly tried to sidestep the issue, saying, "the real question is what"s the difference between being a Democrat and being a Republican."

But her host sought clarification about the Democratic party, asking, "you"re the chairwoman of the Democratic Party. Tell me the difference between you and a socialist."

"The relevant debate that we"ll be having over the course of this campaign is what"s the difference between being a Democrat and being a Republican," Wasserman-Schultz reiterated, refusing to give a direct answer to the question.

The topic came up after Wasserman-Schultz said that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would be given a slot to speak at the Democratic convention.

She said Sanders' "progressive, populist message" of socialism was welcome, calling him "a good Democrat."

At that point Matthews asked what the difference was between a Democrat and socialist, to the great consternation of his interviewee.

Sanders is competing with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and has been enjoying a large amount of support from Democrats.

A Gallup poll in June found the Democratic party is leaning sharply more to the left as compared to 15 years ago, finding 47% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents identify as both socially liberal and economically moderate or liberal. That figure was only 39% in 2008, and 30% in 2001.

In a negative sign for Democrats given Wasserman-Schultz's stammering response, another June Gallup poll found that 50% of Americans said they would not vote for a socialist, making it the demographic group with the least support.

The same poll found that over 90% of Americans said they would vote for a candidate who is Catholic, a woman, black, Hispanic or Jewish.

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]]>36Guardian Webhttp://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=426822015-07-31T16:48:28Z2015-07-31T16:50:37ZThe most powerful African American politicians in the US will next week demand that Silicon Valley companies hire more black people after official figures revealed that many of the world’s most prominent tech companies’ workforces are just 2% black.

GK Butterfield, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), will meet with executives at Apple and Google in Silicon Valley on Monday and Tuesday to tell them to “implement a diversity plan that will place more African Americans in the tech pipeline”.

Butterfield, who will be joined by all members of the CBC Diversity Task Force, has described diversity at Silicon Valley companies track records on diversity as “appalling” and their bosses as “not inclusive”.

The taskforce will meet with executives at Apple, Google, Bloomberg, Intel, Kapor, Pandora and SAP – but not Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo, companies with the lowest proportion of black employees.

African Americans represent less than 1.5% of Facebook’s 5,479 US employees. Mark Zuckerberg’s company hired 36 black employees last year out of a total headcount increase of 1,216. In 2013, Facebook hired just seven additional black people, including just one black woman.

Twitter employs just 49 black people out of a total US workforce of 2,910. The tiny number of African American staff – 35 men and 14 women – represents just 1.7% of Twitter’s US staff.

Yahoo and Google US employees are also just 2% black.Apple fares better with African Americans making up 7% of its workforce.

African Americans account for 13.6% of the US population, according to the 2010 US census.

Spokespeople for Twitter and Facebook did not explain why executives from the companies are not meeting with the CBC task force next week. However, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, did recently meet with Butterfield in Washington DC. She also wrote a blogpost saying the company would do more to address “unconscious bias” against black people.

Butterfield said: “Our goal for this trip is to encourage and partner with these organizations to implement a diversity plan that will place more African Americans in the tech pipeline. This will potentially lead to a wide range of opportunities, from student internships to positions on the boards of tech companies. Building a coalition of leaders from the public and private sectors ensures greater diversity and full representation of African Americans at every level of tech by 2020.”

He has previously said: “Many of the technology companies have African Americans as very loyal customers, and many of those don’t have any African Americans on their boards. Their senior leadership within many of these companies is not inclusive, and the workforce is appalling. And their reinvestment in African American communities is less than desirable.”

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]]>24Baltimore Sun (MD)http://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=426752015-07-31T16:51:24Z2015-07-31T16:30:57ZAttorneys for the six Baltimore police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray presented new evidence Wednesday to support their claims that a prosecutor went "shopping" for a judge to sign warrants for the officers' department-issued cellphones.

The evidence in their motion included text messages between the prosecutor and a police detective investigating the case.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, responded to claims by some of the officers that they had made statements to detectives under duress.

"Simply put," they wrote in a motion of their own, "no one ordered, compelled, coerced, or otherwise required the Defendants to make their statements. They gave them voluntarily."

Defense attorneys repeated their assertion that a prosecutor -- identified for the first time as Assistant State's Attorney Albert Peisinger -- communicated improperly with a Circuit Court judge to get the warrants signed after the first judge he tried found that they lacked probable cause.

Defense attorneys say they also discovered an unexecuted warrant for the officers' private cellphones that was never disclosed to them in discovery, and another warrant -- for the same personal phones -- that was denied.

The defense filing is a response to a motion filed last week by the office of Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby in which prosecutors called the judge-shopping claim a "falsehood" and suggested it would ask the court to sanction the attorneys who brought it.

The defense attorneys say it's the prosecutors who deserve to be sanctioned.

"The State seeks to mask their own misconduct with rhetoric," they wrote.

The language of the motions reflects the ever-increasing tension between the defense and prosecution in the closely watched case.

Rochelle Ritchie, a spokeswoman for Mosby, declined to comment on the filings, saying that prosecutors will litigate the case "in the courtroom."

Defense attorneys declined to comment or could not be reached.

Observers said the motions were unnecessarily personal or pointed in their language, but could have real implications for the outcome of the case, particularly if the phone records or the officers' statements include key evidence for the prosecution.

Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a neck injury in the back of a police van.

All have pleaded not guilty. A trial date has been set for October. None of the officers have yet appeared in court, leaving attorneys to wage the legal battle entirely through motions.

The defense raised concerns about the alleged "judge-shopping" by the prosecution in a motion earlier this month. Attorneys cited the account of a detective who said he was directed to present the warrant applications to Judge Timothy Doory after they had been rejected by another judge.

Prosecutors responded quickly with a motion of their own in which they accused the defense of making "deliberate falsehoods" and said that a phone call the defense claimed Peisinger made to Doory never happened.

"The Defendants simply assert to be true what they know to be false," the prosecutors wrote.

In the motion filed Wednesday, defense attorneys include a phone log that they say shows Peisinger called Doory's chambers on April 27, around the same time he was texting with the detective working on the case.

That morning, the defense attorneys say, the detective had texted Peisinger to ask if the failed warrant application could be improved by adding information that would provide probable cause.

"We should be fine," Peisinger responded, according to defense attorneys. "I will call to see if Doory will possible sign them."

Eighteen minutes later, the defense says, Peisinger wrote again: "Waiting for a call back. Spoke to the judges chambers."

About three hours after that, Peisinger writes to the detective: "Calling you now."

An hour later, the detective writes to Peisinger: "Got them signed thanks for everything."

The defense attorneys say Doory also signed warrants for the officers' personal cellphones that another judge had denied.

They say Peisinger's actions were "unorthodox and unusual," and that his communications with Doory represent "legitimate concerns" about the prosecution's approach in bringing the charges.

"Such action by the State suggests that there could have been undue influence ... exerted by the Office of the State's Attorney in its pursuit of a judge who would grant a search warrant after a detached and neutral court had determined that the affidavit lacked probable cause," they wrote.

David Jaros, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, said the questions surrounding the warrants deserve a hearing, as the defense has requested. He said it makes sense for defense attorneys to call Doory's neutrality into question, because that's the only way for the defense to suppress the cellphone records.

But he said both sides have gone too far with their rhetoric in recent motions. Prosecutors should not have suggested they intended to seek sanctions against the defense for seeking more information on the judge-shopping concerns, Jaros said, because those are legitimate concerns that any "rigorous defense attorney" would raise.

The defense attorneys, meanwhile, should not have suggested that prosecutors didn't actually conduct the independent investigation into Gray's death described by Mosby when she announced the charges, he said. They made that suggestion in a motion this month seeking more evidence from that investigation, a move Jaros called "silliness."

"Both sides would be really well served by toning down the personal rhetoric and simply focusing on the legal issues of the case, of which there are many," he said.

Jeremy Eldridge, a former state prosecutor in Baltimore, said the most recent motion shows that the defense attorneys are right to question whether they are receiving all the discovery in the case.

He noted that the defense has now shown that warrants that were sought -- executed or not -- were not disclosed to them, and that communications between a judge and prosecutor were also left out of evidence.

"Is it really the responsibility of the defense attorneys to uncover what happened during the investigation?" Eldridge asked. He said evidence that is in any way discoverable should just be turned over up front.

Prosecutors have said they turned over all discoverable evidence. And in their motion this week, they argued it is the defense that's trying to suppress evidence improperly.

Rice, Porter and White said in motions this month that they had made statements to investigators because they feared losing their jobs. Miller and Nero also argued that their statements were taken improperly.

Prosecutors denied those allegations and offered details of how the videotaped interviews were conducted.

They called the interviews "relaxed and investigatory" rather than aggressive or confrontational. For example, the detectives conducting the interviews referred to Rice as "LT" and "boss," and to White as "Sarge," given their higher ranks.

Prosecutors described one of White's interviews as "a friendly gathering of information" between officers on the same force.

"They all entered the room laughing about the red light outside the room that indicated the recording equipment was on and how in this situation red meant go," prosecutors wrote. They noted that White had her service weapon with her in the interview room, in apparent violation of the Police Department's policy.

Rice, prosecutors say, "chose his own seat at the table, which was the 'softer' chair that was not bolted to the ground, and the detectives sat across from him."

It's not clear what the officers told investigators in those interviews. Prosecutors wrote that they withheld transcripts of the officers' statements to police "given the concern about prejudicial pretrial publicity." It's also not clear what was found in the officers' cellphones, which were obtained through the warrants now in question.

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(c)2015 The Baltimore Sun

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FERGUSON, Mo. (UPI) -- A silent march and a day of civil disobedience are among the planned events to mark the one-year anniversary of the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man by a white police officer, an event that launched a nationwide outcry over race relations and police brutality.

The "Ferguson Commemoration Weekend," from Aug. 7 through Aug. 10, will highlight the Aug. 9, 2014 death of Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, a white police officer who was later cleared of wrongdoing by a St. Louis grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department. He resigned from the department in November.

Organizers said the goal of the weekend-long event is "to commemorate lives lost to police violence over the past year, to pay homage to our great civil rights leaders and ancestors and to honor the modern-day activists, young and old, who set off the Ferguson uprising, crystallizing a nationwide movement for black lives."

Ed Beasley, Ferguson's interim city manager, said the events are planned to bring the community together.

"They can expect were going to be very encouraging, supportive, but also make sure the laws are upheld," said Beasley, adding that it is very important that "people have the right to exercise their civil rights the proper way."

Among the events is a 4 1/2-minute National Moment of Silence at 11:55 a.m. on Aug. 9 and a Day of Civil Disobedience and National Call to Action on Aug. 10.

Event organizers are using #unitedwefight to spread the word about the event and justice for those injured by law enforcement.

"We're using the hashtag #UnitedWeFight because we lift up and demand justice not just for Michael Brown, Jr., but for Sandra Bland, for Cary Ball, for Yvette Smith, for Kajieme Powell, for Dontre Hamilton, for Taneisha Anderson, for Vonderrit Myers and for far too many more," organizers said.

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]]>40Guardian Webhttp://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=426772015-07-31T12:22:16Z2015-07-31T11:49:10ZHillary Clinton’s overlap of private and political activities was once again in the spotlight on Thursday after a Wall Street Journal report that since Clinton helped broker a settlement in a legal tax case against UBS while she was secretary of state, the Swiss bank has increased its financial support and involvement in Clinton Foundation projects.

In February 2009, the IRS sued UBS and demanded that it disclose the names of 52,000 possible American tax evaders with secret Swiss bank accounts. In the months that followed – thanks to involvement of Clinton as secretary of state and Swiss lawmakers – a legal settlement was negotiated. On 19 August 2009, it was announced that UBS would pay no fine and would provide the IRS with information about 4,450 accounts within a year.

Since the deal was struck, disclosures by the foundation and the bank show the donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation growing “from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The bank also teamed up with the foundation on the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative, creating a pilot entrepreneur program through which UBS offered $32m in loans to businesses, the newspaper reported. Other UBS donations to the Clinton Foundation include a $350,000 donation from June 2011 and a $100,000 donation for a charity golf tournament.

Additionally, UBS paid more than $1.5m in speaking fees to Bill Clinton between 2001 and 2014, the newspaper reported.

A UBS spokeswoman told the Journal that any insinuation of a connection between the legal case and the Clinton Foundation “is ludicrous and without merit”.

“Any suggestions that [Clinton] was driven by anything but what’s in America’s best interest would be false. Period,” said a Clinton campaign spokesman. He referred UBS-related questions to the State Department, which told the Journal that the bank was a topic of “serious discussion, among other issues” in bilateral talks with the Swiss.

Clinton’s involvement in the UBS settlement is no secret. A Reuters analysis of the settlement negotiations published in April 2010 showed that Clinton was involved at several points in the process.

According to the report, the US State Department was grateful to the Swiss for their support in places like Cuba and Iran and for “helping to broker a deal that normalized relations between Turkey and Armenia”. As such, then-Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey was able to connect with Clinton over the phone and meet her face to face three times before the deal was struck in August.

The Wall Street Journal claims that Clinton’s involvement was “more extensive than previously reported”. Using cables published by WikiLeaks and interviewing people involved, the Journal reported that prior to the deal being struck, the Swiss assisted in a release of a US journalist jailed in Iran, told the US that Swiss-based energy-consulting company Colenco would shut down its Iran operations and expressed willingness to accept some low-risk Guantánamo detainees.

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]]>8Associated Presshttp://www.gopusa.com/http://www.gopusa.com/news/?p=426792015-07-31T12:20:43Z2015-07-31T11:40:03ZKENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (AP) — Former President George H.W. Bush is showing he has a sense of humor about falling at his Maine summer home and fracturing a bone in his neck.

The 91-year-old tweeted a smiling photo showing him in a neck brace and giving two thumbs up Thursday. He tells his followers, "Who knew jumping out of planes was safer than getting out of bed?" He also gives thanks for the "kind get-well messages" he's received.

The 41st president survived bailing out of his torpedo bomber when it was shot down in World War II and has skydived several times since then, including on his 90th birthday.

Bush took a tumble on July 15 at his Kennebunkport home. Doctors are letting the fractured vertebra heal on its own over the next few months.

During the winter Bush lives in Houston.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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